Promise
by wazlib88
Summary: "I hate not knowing, but there's nobody I'd rather puzzle it all out with." Ron and Hermione share a quiet moment a few weeks after the battle.


**A/N: It's been awhile. I've graduated from college and gotten a job and a whole host of other things. I've also written some drabbles on Tumblr that haven't made it up here - I'll work on rectifying that, I promise. I wrote this little piece for Romione ship week, and it was somewhat inspired by the lovely CoyoteLaughingSoftly's "To Know You is to Love You." :)**

 **Disclaimer: I'm clearly not JK Rowling. Bah.**

"Hermione?"

The timid tap on the door seemed awkward coming from his tall frame, but Ron imagined his visible hesitance matched perfectly.

Hermione set her book neatly on her smooth legs, which lay atop the cotton sheets, and she pressed the worn page with care as she met Ron's eyes. Her own were underlined by shadows, and her voice felt heavy when she spoke. "Hi."

Ron's shoulders slouched as he let out a breath. "Didn't see you at breakfast," he remarked, leaning against the doorframe.

"I was up early, so I fixed myself a bit of toast and came back up here," she explained, glancing toward the plate of crumbs on the bedside table. "I wasn't terribly hungry."

Ron nodded. It was tough to regain an appetite after a year on the run, despite his mum's desperate attempts to cook hope into a house that had been undeniably changed since the war. It was strange, Ron thought, that losing one of their own had made the atmosphere seem so...full. Palpable. The elephant in the room, he supposed.

Ron shook his head quickly, reminding himself of the agreement he, George, and Ginny had made after sharing a bottle of firewhiskey a few days after Fred's service. Dwelling wouldn't do them any good, they knew, and they ought to live as their brother would have done had he been given the chance. None of them were entirely succeeding at the not-dwelling part, of course, and Ron doubted that would change anytime soon, but it gave them a reason to keep going.

"A few of us are gonna play some Quidditch," he said to Hermione then. "You could come outside. Watch, read, whatever you like."

"I suppose," Hermione said quietly. Her eyes drifted to the chipped scarlet polish on her toes, but she just drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin atop them. Her curls, unruly from the early humidity and heavy from a year without a trim, fell from the loose tie holding them behind her back.

"Fresh air and what not," Ron mumbled, scratching the back of his neck and wincing. It had been like this for weeks now; their bad days never quite matched up. Whenever one of them was ready to reach out, the other withdrew. Two days ago, for example, she'd come up to his room with supper after he'd spent the afternoon in one of those "dwelling" states, and he'd just pecked her on the cheek, unable to come up with the right words, with any words, to describe the dichotomy of helplessness and hopefulness that swirled in his gut when she appeared at his lowest moments.

But it was just that feeling that prompted him to break the status quo. Summoning all his courage in one deep breath, Ron crossed the room to sit at the foot of her bed and looked her straight in the eye. "Tell me what's wrong," he said. His voice was firm, but he folded his hands together and bounced them on his knee, nervously.

Hermione sighed. "Ron-"

He shook his head. "C'mon, tell. Is it Australia, your parents? You know it's all set; with the whole lot of us along it won't take longer than week, maybe two-"

"I know," Hermione interrupted, sitting up straighter and reaching over to tap his fluttering hands gently. "I'm worried, yes, but it's everything else, too. Too much to pinpoint, you know? Just...too much."

Ron nodded and clasped her hand between his. He blushed when he realized how badly he was sweating, but Hermione hardly seemed to mind. She rubbed her thumb against his knuckle once, slowly, and smiled.

They sat in silence a moment, connected only by their hands. Then, Hermione coughed. "You should go on outside. I'll be okay in here."

Ron almost obliged, would have done yesterday, but he'd sworn to himself ages ago that he'd practice the honesty they both deserved, and now seemed as good a time as any to finally make good on his promise. "I'd rather be here with you," he said, turning her hand over and tracing the lines of her palm. Her fingers quivered just slightly at his touch. "We were meant to have learned about this in Divination," he said quietly, "but I can't remember a damn thing."

Hermione snorted. Ron's heart skipped a beat when he felt her fingers on his arm, delicate against the thick scars on his bicep. "I'd scold you, but…"

Ron chuckled. "Reckon the future's wide open now, yeah?" He looked to her with a small, hopeful smile. She nearly returned it. "What is it?" he asked hurriedly, fighting against all odds to keep his face from falling when her grin wavered.

"I just…" Hermione trailed off, sighing again and pulling her hands away slowly. "I don't know how to do this."

It was like his stomach had taken a swan dive, but missed the Golden Snitch. "How to do…to do this?" he asked, gesturing in the space between them. They had always talked about everything, everything but whatever it was in that space. But there was no point in being glib now, was there? They'd kissed, four times to be exact, and though there hadn't been a time or place for, well, more _passionate_ displays of affection, Ron knew how he felt, and he thought he'd known where this was heading.

Hermione's eyes widened; she must have detected the worry in his expression. "It's not that I don't _want_ \- I just, I don't know…"

"I'm not following you," Ron said honestly. Hermione tended to do this, to glaze over the details when her mind was running faster than the words could fall, but this was too important to try to piece together the edges of an idea. "If you want...well, us, then what's there not to know?"

"It's not that I don't…" Hermione broke off and took a deep breath to collect herself, sliding up against the headboard. "I - I've been in love with you since I was fifteen. I know that. But that's _all_ I know."

Ron gaped at her. He'd known that she must have _some_ sort of feelings for him, what with the kissing and all, but this...this was more than he could have expected. If that was all she knew, it was all he ever needed her to know. Ron's mind had only just caught up to his stuttering heart when he noticed that her cheeks had flushed; she was breathing very fast, almost like she was... nervous?

"Hey, you know I love you too, yeah?" he said quickly. It was strange, confessing something he'd held so close to his heart of hearts for years, yet something he'd thought had been obvious to her for weeks, even months now.

Hermione exhaled and rolled her tense shoulders. "I didn't, actually."

"Well, shite," Ron said bluntly. He caught her eye then, and they both laughed, more freely than they had in weeks. "Fifteen?"

Hermione nodded. "'Round the time I realized why it bothered me that you wanted to go to the ball with somebody pretty."

"You _were_ somebody pretty," Ron lamented. "Are. And more than that, too, I was just-"

"Fifteen," Hermione finished, hugging her knees closer and offering him a soft smile. "We both were, see, that was the trouble."

Ron grinned. "But we made it out the other side, yeah?"

"But the trouble _here_ is that I never thought we would," Hermione explained, casting her eyes past him to the open door. "Not that we wouldn't be like this, just that...I never thought I'd be going to Australia."

Ron nodded again. Truth be told, he hadn't expected to make it through the war, either. They were Harry Potter's best friends, after all, and while neither of them would have given that up for anything, the position came with certain occupational hazards. Harry had been their first priority, keeping him alive so that he could end it, so that their families could be safe.

"I don't know how to be in a relationship," Hermione admitted, each word laid with precision. "I barely know how to _be_ at all, to be honest, what with everything that's happened, but I...I don't want to wait, either, and I don't know what to do."

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't know how to be in a relationship either," Ron said dubiously, twisting the sheet with his pointer finger. "And don't try to tell me that I have been, because that wasn't the same and you've _got_ to know that."

Hermione bit her lip again, but she still didn't meet his eyes. "Yes, I suppose I do."

"It's not like there's a set of rules. It's not one-size-fits-all," Ron said, carefully, watching her fingers dig into her calves. That had been a lesson, ironically, from the book the twins had given him. _No person can fit into a box marked boyfriend or girlfriend. They can only be who they are._

"There are a few, though," Hermione insisted. "We're meant to talk, which we do, but about _us_ and our feelings and all that. And then there's the sex." She stopped abruptly, the sentence hanging in the air between them.

Ron nearly choked. "Well, we, I mean, we don't have to - not til we both want to, anyway…"

"Oh," Hermione said, her voice a little too high-pitched. "Well, good, I would hope...but I didn't know you wanted, or expected, or-"

"I don't expect anything!" he assured her. "I mean, I've never had...and even if I had, well, it takes two of us. And I want it to be right. So we'll just wait, you know?"

"Okay," she said, finally snapping her eyes back to his. "It's not that I want us to wait _forever_ , of course-"

"Course," Ron replied. "Just...y'know, let me know what's okay and what's not, and I'll do the same, yeah?"

"Yes," Hermione agreed, reaching to tug on his hand. He took the hint and moved to sit next to her, his back against the headboard. She sighed contentedly and rested her head on his shoulder, squeezing his hand tightly in hers. "This is nice."

"It is," he agreed, resting his lips against her forehead and breathing in her vanilla shampoo through his nose. Her body was warm against his, comforting even in the midday heat.

"I used to think that this was all there is to love," Hermione remarked quietly. "You get butterflies when you see the right person, then you have a nice cuddle and wind up married."

"You don't need to know all the answers," Ron reminded her. "We'll learn as we go."

"Yes, but people break up all the time, don't they?" Hermione fretted, her voice muffled his shirt. "I don't want that to be us."

"So we won't let it be," Ron reasoned.

"Do you really think it'll be that easy?" Hermione asked skeptically.

Ron snorted. "Hell no, but now we know we love each other." A silly grin spread across his lips when he said the words, his soaring heart still hardly daring to believe they were true. "I reckon that's half the battle. Now we've just got to commit and make a life of it, that's what my parents did." He blushed at his implication - they certainly weren't ready to commit on _that_ level - but something stopped him from taking it back, and Hermione snuggled further into his side.

"It just feels like a lot," she concluded. "All of it. It feels like I've got years' worth of things to say to you, to make you understand…"

"We'll get to it," Ron replied. "I've got a lot to tell you, too."

"How can you be so calm?" Hermione asked with a sigh. "I'm not complaining, but…"

"I don't know," Ron said. It was a fair question. Quite frankly, he reckoned he ought to have been more terrified than he was, but it was as though the minute she'd told him that she loved him, everything that mattered had fallen into place. Like the two trickiest pieces of the puzzle had come together, and it was just a matter of time before the rest filled in around them.

"I guess I don't think it should be that complicated if it doesn't need to be," he continued slowly. "I mean, it will be complicated, I know that, but we're still Ron and Hermione. Always have been, always will be."

"Ron and Hermione," she repeated, then laughed quietly. "It's funny, you know, I think _that_ means more than a million of the romantic declarations I feel like we ought to make."

"Well, good, because I'm not about say that I want to spend every waking minute with you," Ron said, grinning as her curls tickled his chin, "but I'd be happy with a solid three-quarters of 'em, and all the sleeping ones if Mum'd let us."

Hermione tilted to face him, her eyes shining her nose inches from his. "See, that's two lovely things you've said just now. You're just better at this than I am, aren't you?"

"Nah, I'm rubbish," Ron dismissed, nudging her nose with his. His words came out in a murmur against the side of her mouth. "You're here, that's lovely enough."

"But I want you to understand that you're...you're _more_ than my best friend," Hermione breathed against his lips. "And that I hate not knowing, but there's nobody I'd rather puzzle it all out with."

"See, that's romantic as hell," Ron replied, and he wasn't lying - because every time she looked at him like _that_ , like the sun was shining out of his arse and he was holding an entire library in his arms, like he _was_ the library, his heart swelled in the best way, full of something he didn't think he could describe - and he didn't want to belittle it by trying to.

"I love you," Hermione murmured, and he brushed his lips chastely against hers. They kissed for what felt like ages, but Ron had no desire to stop. He hadn't known that it could be like this - slow, sensual, but packed with meaning...a promise.

They only broke apart when their breathing slowed, bleary eyes blinking as they wrapped their arms around each other, slipping into a much-needed rest. The haze of battle might take years to clear, but they had a hand to hold and a promise of more to come, and that was more than enough.

 **A/N: Thanks for reading! I promise to come around more often, hopefully. :)**


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